Twitter Surpasses One Billion Monthly Tweets

You know what sort of fell off in the second half of 2009? Twitter stories.
It seemed like once the mass adoption phase of the microblogging service in the first half of the year quieted down, Twitter use plateaued in the second half of the year, giving us a fairly good idea of what the service’s reach would ultimately be.
In social networking news, Facebook’s steady growth overtook Twitter’s headlines, and while Twitter remained one of the year’s top stories, it appeared to hit its peak. Which was kind of disappointing as its competitor continued to pass milestone after milestone .
Twitter usage is notoriously difficult to put into metrics; unlike Facebook, much Twitter activity occurs on third-party apps that make up the rich Twitter ecosystem.
Twitter reached the one-billion monthly tweets milestone in December, according to Twello lead developer Matther Daines and reported in WebProNews.
According to Daines’ figures, there were 1.2 billion tweets in December, a significant jump from November’s 89 million. Twitter also passed the 100 million user mark last month.
The number of tweets per user also jumped 21 percent in December. Registered Twitter users tweeted an average of 11.5 times last month, the highest average since July, which probably means that people tweet more while on vacation.
The amount of tweets per user rose in a pretty fascinating way in 2009. In January of last year, only 3.9 tweets were sent per registered user. The number of tweets grew throughout the year as Twitter became more central to communications and to lives: by August it had settled into an average of 8.7 tweets per registered user, a level that grew to 9.5 in November.
So for many people, it was a question of figuring out how to use the service
Overall, the amount of tweets per user grew 1,514 percent in 2009.
(Via: WebProNews)
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Twitter allows users to post text updates via SMS, instant messaging, email, Twitter’s website and third party applications. Users have their own profile page that displays their latest updates. In addition, users can become “friends” with one another, or simply be a “follower.” Other than reading another person’s profile page, a user can also receive others’ updates through text messages, RSS or third party applications.
Twitter itself is a free service, though users may have to pay text messaging charges to the phone carriers.

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Google to Develop Experimental 1 Gbps Broadband Network

Interesting strategy. Google followed up its semi-interesting – if semi-redundant – Buzz announcement yesterday with a much bigger one today.
Google is getting into broadband.
The Mountain View-based company announced today that it is going to build an experimental 1 Gbps broadband network.
“We’re planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States,” according to Google. “We’ll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.”
Google is building the network with several goals in mind:
Next generation apps. With speeds that high, developers should have a field day.
New deployment techniques. Google will test new ways to build and deploy broadband networks, promising to share its findings.
Openness and choice. The network will be open, offering customers the choice of their ISP.
There’s two sides to this. Imaging a future where Google owns the infrastructure as well as the internet is scary. On the other hand, the speed is sweet.
According to Akamai, the U.S. is currently 18th in global broadband speed with an average of 3.9 Mbps per second.  Obviously a jump to 1 Gbps would giant, perhaps the major breakthrough of its tech generation.
While this is a test, if Google can develop and deploy this infrastructure in a timely way, internet use could change drastically in the next ten years. If the company is as open and transparent as it promises, this would be great. If not, and Google becomes the owner of a nation’s broadband infrastructure, it will mark one giant leap to the Darkside for a company which is already raising multiple concerns.

U.S. Broadband 100 Years Slower than Japan’s

U.S. broadband is thirty times slower than Japan’s.  If American speeds keep growing as slowly as they are now, it will take the U.S. 100 years to reach Japan’s current level, according to the Communications Workers of America’s second annual Speed Matters survey.
“The United States has not made significant improvement in the speeds at which residents connect to the Internet. Our nation continues to fall far behind other countries.”
The median download speed in the U.S. was 2.3 megabits per second (mbps), while the average speed was 4.9 mbps. U.S. speed only grew 0.4 mbps from 1.9 in 2007.
Japan, on the other hand, averages 63.6 mbps.

In terms of broadband speed, the U.S. is 15th on the list of industrialized nations, according to a May 2008 study by The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Ranking ahead of the U.S. were (rated in download megabits per second):
1. Japan, 63.6
2. South Korea, 49.5
3. Finland, 21.7
4. France, 17.6
5. Sweden, 16.8
6. The Netherlands, 8.8
7. Portugal, 8.1
8. Poland, 7.9
9. Norway, 7.7
10. Canada, 7.6
11. Austria, 7.2
12. Belgium, 6.3
13. Iceland, 6.1
14. Germany, 6.0
About 15 percent of Americans still use dial-up internet connections. As most of these connections were too slow to participate in the survey, CWA believes that the average American internet connection is much slower than its survey indicates.
The CWA believes that internet speed is vital to our economic growth. “It determines whether we will have the 21st century networks we need to create the jobs of the future, develop our economy, and support innovations in telemedicine, education, public safety, and public services to improve our lives and communities.”

“Governmental action — in partnership with the private sector — is essential to stimulate broadband investment and adoption.”